


Multiple Choice

by messageredacted



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-14
Updated: 2012-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-29 12:55:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/320106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/messageredacted/pseuds/messageredacted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wanna know how I got these scars?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Multiple Choice

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted 1 April 2009.

It’s the knife that changes everything.

Mommy gets it from the kitchen drawer, holds it in front of herself like she actually means to use it, and maybe she does. Ten years, maybe more, and this is the first time he can remember her getting a hand up to defend herself. Her nose is bleeding, probably broken. Her mouth is swelling already. Father’s eyes go big, but not with fear.

“You fucking _cunt_ , you think you’re going to _cut me_?” Father laughs, pushing forward, grabbing her wrist, his mouth pulled wide with delight. She twists the knife and the tip of it slits a thin line up his chest. He slams her wrist into the edge of the counter and bone crunches. Mommy screams and Father gets the knife.

“Stop it, stop—!” Mommy chokes out and then the knife gets her in the gut with a wet punch. She bends into Father, her face touching his chest. The knife comes out red, goes in again and twists and Mommy makes a sound like a cat.

Father shoves her back against the counter again, fits his thumb and forefinger around her neck, tips back her head. The knife goes into her mouth all the way, works around. Mommy’s choking on blood, making noises, screaming.

“You thought you were going to use that on me and get away with it?” Father asks her, laughing. “I’ll show you how to get away with it, you psychotic bitch.” The knife goes into her chest again, cracking a rib, and behind Father, he makes a sound.

Father glances over his shoulder, eyes wet with mirth. “Did you—did you see what she was going to do?” he asks, giggling. “Did you see what she thought she—don’t you think that’s fucking _hilarious_?”

Mommy’s head tips back and she slides out of Father’s grip, her knees bending. He steps back and she hits the floor, her head snapping up when she hits the tile. Father laughs at the noise, bringing one wet hand up to cover his mouth, snorting with laughter. “You don’t think it’s funny, baby?” he says to him. “You’re not laughing?”

The knife drips and Father steps towards him, squats down to get to his level. “Why so serious, baby?” His hand cups the back of his neck. He turns the knife sideways and the blade slips flat between his lips. “Let’s put a smile on that face.”

He pulls the blade to the side.

##

He pulls the blade to the side. It’s wet and sharp and itchy and it pulses red behind his eyes but he does it anyway, keeps his eyes shut and works the blade through his mouth. One side, the other. Make it big.

The bed creaks and his wife rolls over, taking a breath. He opens his eyes. In the reflection of the mirror he can see the wedge of her back. She sits up, stretching. _You’re too serious_ , she always told him. _You need to smile more._ She’s wrong, though. _She’s_ the serious one. He would do anything to make her smile again.

“Something wrong?” she asks, looking over his shoulder at him. The room is dark and clogged with shadows but he can see the scars on her face, red and angry and ugly.

“Didn’t mean for you to wake up yet,” he says. The words come out wrong and slick and a bubble pops in the corner of his mouth. She turns to him fully, the untouched expanse of her brow furrowing. Beneath her eyes her face is a patchwork. They broke his wife and put her together wrong. He just wants to hear her laugh again.

“What are you doing?” she asks, rising to her feet. She’s coming around the bed, coming towards him. He spits into the sink and the blade clatters on the porcelain. He turns on the water and splashes it onto his face, feeling the sting, watching the water turn red. He pushes his tongue into the corner of his mouth so he doesn’t hear it when she starts screaming.

Who’s laughing now?

##

“Who’s laughing now?” The knife comes down in a swing and makes it out the other side of his mouth before he realizes that his cheeks are split from ear to ear. The man’s grip in his hair is so tight that he can’t turn his head and his blood has sprayed over the man’s face in an arc. _My blood_ , he thinks, dazed. _That’s my blood_.

Then the pain hits like a punch in the face. The blood submerges his tongue and dams up behind his bottom teeth. He swallows, chokes, spits. The man in the owl suit drills a fist into his stomach and he coughs out a huff of air, feeling his face twist, feeling his mouth split further. He wants to scream but he can’t get the breath to do it.

The man lets go of his hair and steps back, the knife clenched in his fist. The man is smiling like he thinks they’re done here, like he thinks he’s finished something. _We’re not done_ , he wants to say, but he can’t speak. The last thing he sees as the man disappears into the shadows is the curve of the blade, its crescent shape made to look like wings.

##

He can see the curve of its blade, its crescent shape made to look like wings, as it flashes past him. It’s not until it slaps back into the costumed man’s black gloved hand that he realizes it has cut him, and badly.

It’s back in his room that he sees how bad, and he knows they’re not done at all. This requires payback. You can’t do that to something and not expect there to be consequences. He reaches out and pulls his lips apart, squinting at the new caverns of his mouth that it reveals. _So many teeth_.

The bat man at first seems to think they _are_ done, because he hires someone else to get rid of him once and for all, but then he shows up anyway. Maybe he understands that they are two halves of a whole. They need each other. When the barrel tips and the chemicals pour over him in a deluge, nearly driving him to his knees, it is because of the bat man that he chooses not to let himself die. The chemicals prickle at his skin like millions of needles, worrying away at his smile. It burns the human right out of him.

##

It burns the human right out of him and when he drags the red hood off his head he can feel new air on his skin. Everything around him is strange and new and _funny_ in a way it never was before. His pregnant wife was killed by a _baby bottle heater_. The police think he’s a _criminal mastermind_. He was scared into the river by a _man wearing a bat costume_. What part of that _isn’t_ funny?

He staggers up the riverbank, wiping his face, breathing in the new and dazzling air that flows on this side of the river. Things are different on this side of disaster. He can look back and see the change and know that all it takes is _one bad day_.

##

All it takes is one bad day. He likes to imagine that if things had gone differently, maybe he wouldn’t be here today, wearing these clothes, doing these things, smiling this smile. Then again, maybe something _else_ would have pushed him over the edge. As it is, he can’t remember what exactly started him on this path. Did someone do it to him? Did he do it to himself? Was it an accident?

Whatever—he prefers his past to be multiple choice. Some days it’s a sort of baptism by fire that made him this way. Some days it’s retaliation for his own sins that gets him started. Some days it’s the knife that changes everything.


End file.
